182. How to skip concern, worry and stress so senior dating can be fun

Mature dating can be a scary experience. Even – after a divorce or widowhood – when you’ve gotten through the initial fear of just meeting someone new for the first time, there can still be that lingering, hovering background fear of rejection. And because we’re older the fears of not finding someone or of not looking as chic and svelte and perky as we used to look can loom large. Will this guy or gal we’re falling for stay around? Fear Stress. Worry. The painful emotions come tumbling in.

Worry is an insidious game we play with ourselves without realizing it most of the time. You’ve certainly experienced it: You can recall times when your partner or one of your kids didn’t come home on time. You begin wondering where they are. A few minutes go by and you know something bad has happened or they would have called. Soon you’re picturing an accident, and seconds later you’re dreading that phone call you know will come from the hospital or the police. By the time they walk in the door you’ve terrified yourself and you’re nearly ready to throw up.

All that worry – whether it starts with a fear of someone hurt or a fear of not finding, or losing a relationship – is simply a projection of the mind. It’s all just thought, the only source of our suffering. And it’s all unnecessary. Emotional suffering is totally optional and it ruins the joy and easy pleasure of just dating for fun. I’ve met many older singles who hate dating. They’re always on edge, always stressed, always frazzled by putting out so much energy to try to appear nonchalant and attractive. Does any of this sound like you?

The solution to all this stress and lack of peace in senior dating is simple though not always easy. The solution is to let thoughts come and go rather than being a slave to them. You can’t control your thoughts. You don’t even decide when to think or not think. No one I’ve ever heard of has found the “Thinking: off” switch. Thoughts bubble up. From where? Who knows! They appear, and they disappear in the same way.

The neat thing to know is that if we don’t latch onto them and make them our own they appear and disappear quite quickly as they pass through, and they don’t impact us. The simple part of the solution is to just watch them like you’d watch clouds in the sky, with no emotional attachment. The not-so-easy part is that we may have a long habit of worrying. It’s a bad habit with no payoff at all. We usually don’t even know it until we realize we’re suffering. But even that suffering is a gift because it’s the signal that tells us our thinking is off track. Time to question our thoughts and notice reality.

The Life Force that animates us and lives AS us is the source of all thoughts that spontaneously show up, just as that Life Force is the source of our birth in the first place. Why do we exist? Why does that thought appear? We can never know. But we can accept that this is reality.

So in our dating do we need to be hyper-sensitive with worry about what’s happening or what’s going to happen? Do we need to assess and evaluate every nuance, every word, every experience connected to dating? Does it really pay to try to guess at what someone is feeling and compare that to what we want them to be feeling? (He just said such-and-such, does that mean he’s starting to fall in love with me?)

When we see clearly that the Universe runs itself – and always has – without our worry, opinion and interpretation we may be able to just relax and enjoy life as it is. Spiritual masters have taught for centuries that when there’s no ego-me who thinks it’s in charge there are no problems. Something separate from worry and suffering tells you you’re suffering. Take your stand in that awareness that watches life, including your worry, without being touched by it. There, you can live life in the present moment and notice that life has no problems. And who knows, you might even find that dating is fun! What a concept, huh?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer